1604 - Treaty between Spain and England

The treaty conference at the Somerset House, in London, bringing peace to England and Spain at the end of a nineteen year-long war.

This treaty purposefully left
unresolved the question of who owned what in distant lands.
(Click here for more on this treaty)
Spain asserted that it left the papal charter intact, effectively
denying England the right to sail her ships into the Indies for the
purpose of trade under the Law of Nations, but England could argue
that it had full rights to north and south Virginia. By the
time Jamestown was established a few years later, these questions
were moot. Both monarchs realized that the legal arguments
under the abstract law governing nations had little practical
effect on the rights to empire in foreign lands. The future
legitimacy of any clam would be perfected through power on the
ground, not lawyers in a courtroom.

In this way,
the theocratic arguments of King Duarte and Queen Isabella (a
century before) began giving way to the relentless secular
motivation for acquisition of gold and silver. No one could
fool anyone anymore as to the true prize of conquest. The new
world was about gold and silver, with a few converts thrown in to
lend an air of respectability to the tempests of genocide that
would rule the 'new world' for the next three centuries.